The Cowboy's Unlikely Match
Autor:in
Lisa Childs
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CHAPTER ONE
SUNLIGHT STREAMED THROUGH the stained-glass windows, casting brightly colored shadows over the guests gathered inside the church, and over the groom standing at the altar, waiting for his bride to appear.
Ben Haven couldn’t see his older brother’s face from where he stood at the back of the church, but he imagined Jake was getting impatient. He’d waited twelve years to make Katie O’Brien his bride.
Ben couldn’t imagine making anyone his bride. He didn’t ever want to walk down the aisle. He hesitated now to make that trek just to join his brother. But his hesitation had less to do with the wedding than the memory of the last time he’d walked down this church aisle six weeks ago, when he’d helped carry out his brother Dale’s casket.
The grief and pain of that day gripped him with such intensity that he froze for a moment...until the hand on his arm tightened and tugged. He turned his head toward the bridesmaid he was supposed to be escorting down the aisle. With her pale golden-blond hair and bright blue eyes, Emily Trent was definitely a head turner—especially in the blue dress she was wearing that left her shoulders bare. Her beauty distracted him for a moment from his pain, and he managed to flash her a smile.
She glared at him and, in an urgent whisper, hissed, “Get moving...” Then she turned her head away from him to focus on the front of the church.
And the groom?
Ben suspected, from the couple of times he’d overheard her singing Jake’s praises, that the young teacher had a thing for his brother, so this day probably wasn’t any easier for her than it was for him.
It was difficult for him because of where they were and what they’d done here last. Said goodbye to his brother and his brother’s wife much too soon...
Ben drew in a shaky breath, pasted on a fake smile and started down the aisle with Emily. They didn’t make it halfway down the white runner before a little boy darted out of the first pew and ran up to her. The dark-haired toddler lifted his arms toward her. As well as teaching his older nephews, Emily had become a nanny to the youngest one since Grandma had moved her and a few other women out to the ranch after Dale and Jenny’s deaths.
Emily dropped Ben’s arm and reached for the little boy, picking him up. The church guests chuckled and smiled as the three of them continued moving. Ben moved his hand to the small of Emily’s back, but instead of guiding her, it seemed to make her walk faster, because she surged ahead and his hand slipped away. As he pulled it back to his side, his fingers tingled a bit, and he curled them into his palm.
Emily took her place on the bride’s side with the little boy in her arms while Ben moved over to stand behind his brother’s best man—Katie’s son, five-year-old Caleb Morris.
If Dale had been alive, Ben was sure that Jake would have picked him to stand up with him. But Dale and his wife were gone, leaving behind three little boys. The toddler, Little Jake, had wrapped his arms tightly around Emily’s neck, clinging to her. The other two, five-year-old Ian and seven-year-old Miller, waved at them from the front pew, where they were sitting with their great grandmother, Sadie Haven. All of the boys wore suits with little white Stetson hats except for Little Jake, who must have left his on his seat.
The maid of honor—or was it matron, since there was some speculation about whether or not Miller’s physical therapist, Melanie Shepard, was married?—stood next to Emily. She, like everyone else, was turned toward the back of the church, where the next bridesmaid and groomsman started down the aisle—Ben’s youngest brother, Baker, and the cook Grandma had hired, Taye Cooper.
Jake shifted and peered around them, obviously anxious to see his bride.
“No cold feet?” Ben whispered to him.
Like the little boys and Ben, Jake also wore a white Stetson. But the hat barely moved when Jake shook his head and grinned.
How could he have no doubts? No fears?
Because he was Big Jake Haven and just as fierce and fearless as their grandfather had been, the right person to have been named after him.
Caleb, Jake’s soon-to-be stepson, turned toward Ben and peered up at him. “Are your feet cold?” he asked. A lock of blond hair slipped out beneath his white hat and fell across his blue eyes.
He looked more like Emily’s kid than he did red-haired Katie’s. But apparently he looked exactly like his father, another man who’d died too soon.
Ben nodded at the little boy. “Always...”
His feet would always be too cold to carry him to the altar to marry. After all the losses he’d endured, and the losses he’d watched others suffer, he had no desire to risk that kind of heartache.
But then the music changed, and everyone stood and peered down the aisle, where the bride had just appeared, holding her father’s arm. Ben turned his attention from her to his brother, and the look he saw on his face...
Ben had never seen Jake look as happy as he did right then. Ever. Maybe the risk of heartache was worth it for Jake, for that kind of happiness.
It wasn’t for Ben. He had vowed long ago to stay single forever.
IT WASN’T FAIR. But Emily had learned at a young age that life wasn’t fair. So she shouldn’t have been surprised that the best of the Haven brothers was the first to get married. What wasn’t fair was that it was to someone else, but she couldn’t be jealous of Katie. She’d been through so much herself that nobody deserved happiness more than she and Jake deserved it.
The people of Willow Creek laughed and smiled now as they enjoyed cake and ice cream in the community room off the church—not just with happiness for Jake and Katie, but with relief that something good was happening in a place that had last held a funeral. To Emily—and to Dale and Jenny’s boys, the youngest of whom sat in her lap—it wasn’t enough good. Losing the loving young couple so soon really wasn’t fair—not at all.
That wasn’t the only reason Emily wasn’t laughing and smiling like everyone else, though. She was also too stricken with the injustice of how good Ben Haven looked in a suit.
Especially when Emily felt so frumpy in her hastily purchased dress.
After having waited twelve years to marry, Jake and Katie hadn’t wanted to wait a moment longer. Since there was no waiting period for marriages in Wyoming, they’d obtained their license right away and had thrown together their ceremony within two days. Katie’s wedding party—which consisted of the latest hires at Ranch Haven: Emily; the physical therapist, Melanie Shepard and the cook, Taye Cooper—had had to find whatever dresses they could off the rack. And it showed...
Taye’s was too tight and Emily’s was too big—so big that it kept falling off her shoulders like a peasant blouse. If not for the fitted bodice above the empire waist, she might have lost the whole thing on her fast trek down the aisle with Ben. Well, it had been fast once he’d put his hand on her back. Then she hadn’t been able to get away from him fast enough... From his touch, which had felt like a hot brand through the thin material of her dress.
Even though he’d grown up on the ranch, he wasn’t a real cowboy like his brothers. He wasn’t one to brand the cows or calves or whatever ranchers branded. He was a politician—though he often wore a cowboy hat with his suit, like today.
But his clothes fit him perfectly, had probably been tailor-made just for him, so that he looked more like a model for GQ magazine or a movie star than a small-town mayor. With his dark hair and eyes, chiseled features and long, lean build, he was that perfect—like he wasn’t even real.
Emily suspected that he wasn’t, that he was just as fake as some other people she’d known growing up, such as the ones who’d befriended her in school because they’d felt sorry for her—not because they’d actually respected or liked her. She’d known Ben too back then; she’d been a couple grades behind him. Ben Haven—all the Havens—had been popular because of their good looks and charm and intelligence and humor. But Ben had been notorious because of all the hearts he’d broken.
Emily herself had mopped up tears shed over him. Not her own tears. She wouldn’t have been so stupid as to ever go out with him. But some of her friends had dated him for the one or two times he’d gone out with anyone before he lost interest in them.
A bowl of ice cream appeared on the table in front of her. She glanced up with a smile, expecting that it was probably nurturing Taye who’d brought it for her. But when she saw who stood beside her, her smile slipped away.
“What are you doing?” she asked Ben.
“Bringing you ice cream.” He glanced at the toddler asleep on her lap. “Doesn’t look like you can move right now.”
It would have been a sweet gesture if anyone else had done it. But from him...
He had to have an ulterior motive. She narrowed her eyes and studied his handsome face. “Why would you think to bring me anything?” she asked. “We just walked down the aisle together. We’re not on a date.”
He chuckled, although it had a bit of a nervous sound to it, and he reached for his tie, tugging at it slightly as if the blue silk was suddenly choking him. “‘Walked down the aisle together.’ You make it sound like we got married.”
She laughed then—at the thought of the two of them ever getting together. “That would never happen.”
“Oh, no, you’ve made it clear that I’m not the Haven brother you’re interested in,” he said, but from the slight grin on his face, he didn’t seem too bothered about her lack of interest. “I figured since that brother just got married, you might want to drown your sorrows in a pint of ice cream.” He picked up the bowl in his palm, acting as if it was a scale. “Might not be quite a pint...”
She glared at him now. “I don’t have any sorrows to drown,” she assured him. “I’m very happy for Katie and Jake.” She turned her attention to where the newly married couple stood near the decimated cake. Taye had made it, so Emily wasn’t surprised there was barely any of the buttercream-frosted marble cake left. Katie and Jake hugged each other closely, their faces lit up with bright smiles. And she smiled herself.
Ben’s breath audibly caught. And she glanced back to see if he was staring at the happy couple too. But he was staring at her, and with an expression so intense that she shivered.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Just... Now I get it...”
“What?” she asked again.
“You,” he said. “I get you...”
She shook her head now and made clear what she thought she had earlier. “That’s never going to happen.”
“I’m not proposing,” Ben said, and again there was a nervousness in his voice, in the smile he forced. “I just see what the boys see in you.”
Being blonde and petite, she was used to men noticing her. But he hadn’t said men. “Boys?”
He gestured at the toddler asleep on her lap. “The little guys. I see it...”
“Kid whisperer is what Taye calls me,” she admitted.
He nodded. “I’ve heard that.”
He would have seen it, had he spent much time at the ranch since she’d moved in, but he’d only visited his nephews a few times over the last six weeks, since the funeral. So much for helping out with the recently orphaned kids...
Emily shouldn’t have been surprised, though. She’d known families who had acted like Ben Haven had, families who abandoned instead of helping. She’d had a family like that herself. After her mother died when Emily was six, she’d lived with her maternal grandparents. Soon after, they’d claimed they weren’t young enough to raise a child and so they’d passed her on to an aunt, who’d passed her on to a cousin, until Emily had wound up in foster care. So that family wasn’t her family anymore. She snorted softly with derision.
“What?” Ben asked. “What have I done that makes you dislike me so much? Have I offended or hurt you?”
She shook her head. “Not me personally...”
He narrowed his dark eyes and studied her face. “Someone you know...”
“A few someones back in high school,” she admitted. “A few other ones more recently...”
Just a couple of years ago, she had listened to the sobs of a friend who had fallen hard for the politician when she’d been helping out on his campaign. Poor Maggie...
Maggie Standish desperately wanted a lasting relationship and the kind of love her parents had for each other. Because that was all she’d known, that love and security—the young woman was much too trusting.
Being too trusting would never be an issue for Emily. Maybe that was why, even though she had a lot of friends, none were particularly close to her. She was the one in whom other people confided, but she rarely confided in anyone.
“We went to high school together?” he asked, his eyes narrowing as if he doubted it.
She sucked in a breath at the fact he didn’t even remember her. Willow Creek hadn’t been that big a school, and she’d thought everyone had heard her sad story. About how nobody had wanted her, so she’d wound up living with one of her teachers.
“Wow,” she said, “you are self-involved.”
And he sucked in a breath now. “And you’re self-righteous and judgmental.”
He was lucky that Little Jake had fallen asleep on her lap, or she might have jumped up and dumped that bowl of melting ice cream over Ben Haven’s handsome head.
Little Jake chose that moment, however, to jerk awake, and his chubby little hand upset the bowl, knocking it onto the floor next to Emily. The melted dessert splashed up and over her leg, sliding down her calf to pool in her shoe. It was cold against her skin, so cold that she yelped and jumped up with the sleepy toddler clasped in her arms. Her foot slid inside her wet pump, making her so unsteady that she might have fallen had strong arms not caught her and Little Jake.
If not for holding on to the toddler, she would have rather fallen on the floor than where she was now—in Ben’s arms, pressed close to his long, lean, muscular body. Her pulse was racing, her heart pounding furiously, her skin tingling.
No.
Life wasn’t fair at all.
